> It seems to be similar to the USMC's "Once a Marine, always a Marine."
But people who leave the marines aren't actually marines in any way other than mindset, right? Not sure what I'm supposed to take away from this analogy.
I think the commenter was saying (by analogy) even if all official ties to the CIA are severed, the former CIA employee has so imbibed the CIA Kool Aid that it will be impossible (maybe consciously) to try to go to work at Meta without thinking like a CIA employee. All his decisions will be filtered through the lens of "do I think this is what the government would want?"
Since many of us have met a Marine who – decades later – was still in love with the USMC, we can get a taste of how someone might feel about the CIA years later.
> I don’t believe free market exists in the USA and I think it’s economy and media is almost as heavily controlled as China.
It depends on sector and scale. At the small- and medium-size business level, yes there are free markets. As you get into large businesses and highly political structures (media, healthcare, education, etc.) you're right, we are nearly devoid of a free market.
That's exactly like China though. The heavy involvement of military and quasi-military outfits in business is also exactly like China. It is what our own State Department and other liberal (in the larger economic sense of the word) opinion outlets have criticized China for for decades.
The great firewall of China prevents most of their citizens from seeing news that isn’t the party line. And if you share it you face criminal charges. Not to mention their social ranking system.
It’s ridiculous to say the US media is almost as heavily controlled as China.
But in a way it is as heavily controlled, but just not by the government.
Large media conglomerates own such a large percentage of the media outlets that they are literally controlling what is broadcast by using the exact same text and "news" in every single one of their markets. These "local" stations are dicated to what they can air, and forced to carry specific segments whether it is the same pre-produced segment or at the least the same pre-approved copy that the local read verbatim.
That is not a free press. That is a press doing the bidding of its corporate overlords
I don't know about USA or China, but in Europe you can't access some Russian media, and it's still not clear to me what is the legal framework that legitimate that.
The European commission have that legal capacity? If somebody know why they can do that, I would like to know.
The degree is usually different, but it is sometimes spectacular how much media collaborates to hide news.
Look for any coverage in the US press about the gigantic strikes that workers in India organized in November 2020, possibly involving 250 million workers [0]: there isn't even 1 single article written by any mainstream media in the US (and much of Europe).
> The degree is usually different, but it is sometimes spectacular how much media collaborates to hide news.
Hiding implies a deliberate act to obscure, but you're example is most likely nothing of the kind.
> Look for any coverage in the US press about the gigantic strikes that workers in India organized in November 2020, possibly involving 250 million workers [0]: there isn't even 1 single article written by any mainstream media in the US (and much of Europe).
Also there was a US presidential election in November 2020, which is the kind of thing that drowns out pretty much every other kind of news story. The fact is that unless an international story has some kind of domestic angle (which includes geopolitics), it probably won't get much attention, because most people just don't care.
No, I am talking about the strikes I linked to, that happened one month before and are not even mentioned in this article; and which involved many many times more people (even if you don't believe the 250 million people claimed by the unions) and all industries in several Indian states.
> Also there was a US presidential election in November 2020, which is the kind of thing that drowns out pretty much every other kind of news story. The fact is that unless an international story has some kind of domestic angle (which includes geopolitics), it probably won't get much attention, because most people just don't care.
There are many international news agencies that report on, well, international news. Not even one of them reported these strikes, in November 2020 or ever since. I wasn't expecting this to be covered on Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow's shows - obviously. But it is impossible that not a single international and economic news organization in the USA (and much of Europe, if I remember correctly) thought it worth reporting that for a few days entire Indian states were shut down.
I'm so tired of "whataboutism" being used to as some attempt to shut down an argument. It is perfectly valid to point out hypocritical arguments. And it might stun you to know that the West isn't solely composed of the US. Try going to RT from the EU - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L...
Take special note not just of the block, but of the anticircumvention provisions.
The grandparent made the broad generalization not the person you are replying to. They said the "west" is blocking RT. It might stun you to learn that the US is part of the west and isn't blocking RT. I don't want to stun you too much, but the west is not some uniform block of countries.
> It might stun you to learn that the US is part of the west and isn't blocking RT.
Golly gee, you sure got me there on that! Let's rephrase to "parts of the West", what impact does that have on the argument that Western powers engage in media censorship as well?
> I don't want to stun you too much, but the west is not some uniform block of countries.
The original comment was "Totally not like how access to Russian news outlets has been blocked by the West."
This statement is factually incorrect. I don't see where that argument was actually made.
But sure, some western countries have a level of censorship, yes, but that still doesn't approach the level of China.
And just because there is a wiki entry called western bloc, doesn't mean the western countries are uniform. The US is pretty well known for having broad, but not absolute, protections for freedom of speech.
I think US and China are converging on the same road: basically state officials and large corporations make rules and enforce them. There are differences but the result is the same. We will probably see them converge some 20-30 years later.
Assange pointed out a long time ago that Google was functioning as a state actor. Perhaps the most public expression of this is “Google Jigsaw” and Jared Cohen’s prior role there (prior to joining Goldman Sach’s management committee as a partner).
Given the discourse on their website, FB should have known the optics here would spur negative pieces like this. That said, not buying the insinuation that CIA itself is influencing their former employees. Former employees shouldn't carry a scarlet letter with them to companies they go to after leaving government. The author's history of sensationalist posts in defense of authoritarian govts is pretty suspect as well.
I can only imagine that this comment was written in total ignorance of the CIA's storied history. Suffice it to say that it is not a government agency like any other [1]. If "former" FSB agents held key positions controlling social media content in your country, that would likewise not be concerning, right?
And regardless of just how scarlet the letter should be that "ex" CIA employees carry, it goes without saying any (social) media organization that wants to maintain even the thinnest pretense of neutrality and independence cannot give "ex" intelligence agents, of any country, editorial control.
If someone spent 15 years rising up to the top ranks of the CIA and then left to lead Meta's policy and content moderation, what story is logical to you?
That they were considering moving out of public sector work and someone in their network had moved to Meta and Meta pay and perks dwarfed anything they could have made by continuing to work for the federal government.
This is a company of 60k people. Take issue with their hiring sure, but using the hiring of a couple staffers who are former govt data analysts (these aren't Jason Bourne/blackwater types) to define the company is silly.
Now if we are looking at Tiktok's parent company, which has CCP members on their board, I think it is more fair question the motives of the company there.
cia is an organization that uses torture (among other unethical things). if you ever worked for such an organization, I'm not even looking at rest of your cv. your ethics are clearly lacking.
You should not. But if it makes you feel any better, Americans do the same thing by allowing Chinese tech like Zoom and TikTok operate in their country.
Simply turning off Google/Apple/Amazon/Facebook will have massive repercussions throughout that countries economy and politics and put that country at a competitive disadvantage on a world stage.
Yes, this is partially true. turning off Google/Apple/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft will break stuff. this big five entrenched themselves in IT maybe too much in every possible way.
Also I don't believe country without big tech five will be at much disadvantage. They will be forced to build their own substitutes if they see need for it.
China and the entirety of the EU are the only entities on the planet that could possible compete with "US Tech" and thus the only ones in a position to "go it alone" in order to accelerate a domestic tech industry.
>Of those companies
You're just asserting it is possible to cut all but Google. OK then.
>Why should we allow Facebook to operate on our country given that they hire from the CIA?
I don't know why you're asking HN why your country should make decisions.
I have given you a reason as to why they would make this decision -- access to US Tech. That's the benefit you get -- sounds like a Q for your own gov officials.
Sounds like good ol' nepotism, to me. It seems to happen in all large<sic> industries where the "watchdogs" were/are/will-be employees or contractors of those they regulate. I'm sure plenty of former/current/soon-to-be FCC lawyers are all over it, too.
I wonder how many CIA employees work at any of the top 20 US companies. Ex-CIA employees probably also work at every tech / industrial / health / oil company in decent numbers?
The article gives its sources, and I can go to Linkedin myself to verify its veracity.
You're making an argument from authority that I should ignore the source since some authority said to - incidentally a source discussing how "former" CIA employees are working to censor what information I can see.
> The article gives its sources, and I can go to Linkedin myself to verify its veracity.
So? If they're willing to publish false or fabricated information to push their conspiracy theories, they're almost certainly willing to do other misleading things to push it too -- like making a mountain out of a molehill or giving some mundane fact a sinister spin.
You missed my point: something can present accurate facts in a highly misleading way.
People who've worked for the government get jobs outside of government, usually in similar areas. There's nothing sinister about it, but articles like this want it to seem sinister.
And frankly, this is like 1/10th of a story. They found some profiles on LinkedIn, but so what? Have these people actually done anything unacceptable? MintPress doesn't know.
> Would it be ok if Facebook hired someone who was part of the Sinaloa Cartel?
The CIA (which I understand the bulk is actually writing analysis reports and stuff like that), the FBI, USAID, and the Marines are not drug cartels; and to conflate them is not reasonable.
Intelligence agencies employ departments to create and edit Wikipedia pages. I am sorry I do not provide all the sources for this claim, but this is only logical.
Paypal closed the account of Mint Press News. This is the same financial censorship tactic that was used against Wikileaks.
> One of the basic tactics honed by the CIA in Afghanistan on social media was reply-guy diversion. We now see this constantly on trending anti-Biden Twitter. Maybe that’s your thing?
Did you know that kind of accusation is against the site guidelines?
In any case it's conspiracy theory bullshit. I'm not going to dox myself to prove it false. And even if I did that, it probably wouldn't do any good because a conspiracy theory logic means the conspiracy theory is always true and facts that contradict it are just lies of the conspiracy.
Social media is great if it is not controlled by government, for profit corporations, and AI. This is why I run my own social media servers in the fediverse: Mastodon, Pleroma, Peertube..
Good, but using Intel/AMD/Qualcomm/Apple to run open-source code still exposes people to hardware backdoors and silicon trojans that negate any security and privacy.
You don't need to take my testimony that all US designed CPUs are backdoored with BadBIOS at face value, be skeptical, but not from one side only - be skeptical of the billionaire side also.
I believe you are describing exploits that could be used in targeted surveillance rather than mass surveillance and manipulation which are the main concerns in social media. Targeted surveillance requires identifying targets and how to reach them. If a bunch of anonymous users are using somebody's social media server via TOR or VPN, I am not sure how those individuals could be identified and targeted, but please enlighten me.
It is bad journalism and insulting to the reader. Meta is a large org. CIA, NSA, FBI, etc are large orgs. There will be overlap. You need to tell me why I should care. What are they doing to undermine Meta?
And people called me paranoid for years for never making a Facebook account and staying off social media sites. It's hard enough to avoid being propagandized without being plugged into a firehose of information curated by CIA (sorry, "ex" CIA) agents.
I have no love for Facebook but this is article is such poor and yellow journalism.
>"Aaron is CIA. Or at least he was until July 2019."
The first sentence is false. The second sentence contradicts and corrects the inaccuracy of the first but the order of operation is by design. The first sentence is designed to appeal the gut and produce a visceral response. The second sentence is of course the more important but cerebral thinking it at that point still dominated by the "gut" at the point.
The article then states:
>"These hires are primarily in highly politically sensitive sectors such as trust, security and content moderation, to the point where some might feel it becomes difficult to see where the U.S. national security state ends and Facebook begins."
These folks left public sector. They left their public sector jobs to join the private sector. The line literally ends and begins on their Linkedin profiles which appears to be the biggest source of research for this article.
Then we have this gem:
>"But the sheer scale of infiltration of Facebook blows these away. Facebook, in short, is utterly swarming with spooks."
CIA Analysts are not spooks. Despite the portrayal in TV dramas, CIA analysts spend their time at desks reading and writing reports. They are highly specialized subject matter experts, they don't make policy. They hand data to other people who make policy. A "spook" is an operative, a clandestine role for someone who would most certainly not have a LinkedIn profile.
The article seems to ignore the more obvious in favor of conspiracy, which is that Washington, D.C. is a small town famous for networking. People always use their networks for new and better employment opportunities. It's not hard to imagine that when the first person who arrived at Facebook from DC informed their former colleagues how great the pay and the perks at Facebook were and of course the floodgates opened. Think of how many Beltway Facebook groups there must be. This same scenario plays out at tech companies as well but nobody states "the company is being "infiltrated" by ex-Googlers or ex-Redhat, it's hard to tell where Google ends and company X begins" as that would be seen as absurd.
Lastly, nowhere are any numbers meaningfully qualified. The article intones about the "sheer scale of infiltration" but fails to mention that Facebook is a company of 44K employees or that the CIA employees 22K people. Now consider the total number of people the article identifies as ex-Government which is 37 people total, one of which is no longer there. I would imagine you could go to any large corporation on the scale of Facebook and find an equal number of people that used to work a federal agency. In fact I'm positive you could that using Linkedin as your source as well. I'm guessing that including the results of this kind of comparative analysis would have been detrimental to the thrust of this piece however.
It seems to be similar to the USMC's "Once a Marine, always a Marine."
Food for thought.